Efficient Refrigeration

Transcript

Daniel Giguère:

The term "natural resources" is huge. It covers everything from mines to forests to energy. "Energy" alone means many things: the people who produce energy, who extract petroleum or natural gas, those who produce electricity.

We are now in the test lab. This is where we have most of the testing material we use in our research.

Gilles Jean:

Our primary mandate is to develop know-how to improve how we use and produce energy.

Daniel Giguère:

Energy consumption is central to our society. We depend on it, our very survival depends on it.

Gilles Jean:

I’m Gilles Jean, Director of the CANMET Energy Technology Centre, one of three natural resources research centres dedicated to energy.

Daniel Giguère:

My name is Daniel Giguère. I’m an engineer, and I work at the Centre as a technology expert. CANMET has been around since the early 20th century. It's known worldwide among researchers. I was in Beijing recently. I'd say, "I work for CANMET," without even saying where it is. "We know CANMET! Wow! A CANMET researcher!" The name is well-respected and known internationally.

Gilles Jean:

The main goal is to lead Canada toward sustainable development.

Daniel Giguère:

Why we conduct research? We conduct research to understand, to know. We can do great things without understanding. Take arenas. We’ve had them for over a century. We build them, they work. We’ve skated on them for a hundred years. But that doesn't mean it's the best ice or the most energy-efficient we can make it.

Gilles Jean:

Are we making the most effective use of our technology? Is it optimized? Does it work well? These questions are constantly overlooked.

The pipes containing brine are covered in ammonia. This technology has been used for a very long time.

Daniel Giguère:

Scientifically, this is one relatively untapped area. Arenas are a perfect subject technologically, because Canada has so many. There are 2,500 in Canada, 430 in Quebec alone. If you take the energy bill of a typical arena here, half of it is just for the refrigeration system.

This is a reproduction of a typical skating rink. In blue we see the frozen surface, the cold. The two yellow bars are the boards of the rink. And here, in red, the stands where we are now. They are red because they are warm. With models like these, we can understand how heat circulates in an arena. It helps us enhance the quality of the refrigeration and heating systems in the arena.

We tested some new concepts in a few arenas, and cut energy consumption in more than half.

Gilles Jean:

It wasn’t a technological challenge, because all the mechanical parts already exist. We just had to rethink how refrigeration is done here.

Daniel Giguère:

As everyone knows, behind the fridge, it's hot. Inside, it's cold. Basically, a fridge pumps heat from the inside to the outside. That’s why it’s hot behind the fridge. It’s the same for the skating rink. To make ice, we draw heat from the rink and push it outside. There’s a heat exchanger on the roof, a condenser, that expels heat from the refrigeration system.

Gilles Jean:

But while your refrigeration system is exhausting two to three times the amount of heat out of the roof, you're using a gas-burning furnace to heat the building. It makes no sense. Why throw heat away outside and use gas to heat the inside?

Daniel Giguère:

There is a continuous fight between the heating in the stands and the refrigeration that absorbs the heat going towards the ice. We are trying to minimize this by understanding how heat is circulating. You heat here, you cool there. The cooling system takes the heat from the furnace and pushes it outside. The more I heat, the more goes outside, because this heat increases my refrigeration load. Something has to change. You go in circles. More heat means more cooling and more goes outside. Consumption goes up, but for the same result. The basic idea: instead of throwing heat outside, the refrigeration system recycles it inside. Easy! But it's not that easy. The two systems have to communicate, to be integrated, linked to each other. They shouldn’t be competing; they need to work together. Recycling helps us achieve that.

Gilles Jean:

When it comes to successful projects like "CoolSolution," in which, in the end, we improve the return for companies, we reduce the green gas emissions, the pollution, and so on, it is how we contribute to sustainable development. The impact is extremely important.